


It Was a Start

by Clockwork



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Bonding, Fluff, Kidnapping, precanon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-16
Updated: 2018-11-16
Packaged: 2019-08-24 16:41:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16643900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clockwork/pseuds/Clockwork
Summary: Precanon. Bobo now has a teenager in a treehouse and now he has to figure out how to win her over to his side.





	It Was a Start

Death comes to everyone. Whether it’s sacrificing yourself, driving recklessly, or being shot by a loved one acting recklessly, everyone faces it eventually. And while others mourn the deaths of some, they find themselves alive and well and hidden away amongst the treetops. Dead to the world and yet very much alive.

She was a spitfire, and her Daddy’s child. That in and of itself was both a curse and a boon. All anger and rage and determination, and yet so easily ready to believe the worse. To listen to the truth of how her daddy had died. An abusive bastard who had tormented a young child because of her mother’s sin. A monster that had turned this child into a killer, or at least she was well on her way to becoming one. 

It was the one thing that he had to offer her, to share with her while she sat glowering in the corner, refusing to speak with her. So he told her the story, talking about a man whose life was devoted to her ancestor. A man who gave up a life of his own for a man he thought was good and doing the right thing. He told her about Juan Carlos, and about how Purgatory had been back then and what had caught them all up in this mess. 

It’s funny how a man can take a child and warp her to their own means and leave out the parts that change the story. Wyatt had done it to Robert Svane. Wade had done it to Willa. And now Bobo kept up the tradition between their families and did the same. Except he told the truth. He told all of the details and all the truths, and he did them so that he could draw her closer, physically and emotionally, that they were both on the same page, coming from the same place.

Two people used and abused and finding a solution to find their freedom, to say fuck you to those that had trapped them there. And maybe Bobo truly meant it when he told her those words that they were so much alike, had been hurt in the same ways, and meant to help one another. Whether he meant them or not in the beginning though, they quickly became part of who he was as his words and his stories worked.

Coming to the treehouse every day in the early days, making excuses to leave and climbing up to find her still cowering in the corner, glaring. The food he had left would be gone, the bed showing signs she must have slept in it, but for days on end, moving into months, it was merely Bobo and his stories. Until the day he ascended into the treehouse, and she was sitting on the bed. Still she didn’t speak to him but there was a note on the table in her neat and perfect penmanship, drawn on a piece torn from a book and written in pencil, faint and light on the page.

A shopping list, he realized, with requests for certain clothes, particular foods, books she wanted. He glanced up at her, paper in hand, and Willa still refused to look up at him. 

“Tomorrow then, Miss Willa.”

And with that he left, heading into town on his own to get the items. Asking another to do it might reveal his secret, and how he’d kept it at all is beyond him. Yet best he could tell, the world believed Willa to be as dead as her daddy, and that was all that mattered. That and not pushing this and risking her running from him, risking that she would disappear back to her sisters before he could plead his case to her.

So he had returned with the items asked for, setting them out neatly and putting them away as best he could in the treehouse. Then he had settled on the other side of the room, and began reading one of the books to her. 

That became their routine for several weeks, leading into a few months. They didn’t speak. No, that was not true. Bobo spoke to her, but Willa never responded. Not in words. Only in notes that she left as she needed things. Nothing personal. Nothing directly to him. Just a list that became more personal with time. Not just the basics she needed, but things she wanted as well.

They stayed across the room from one another, her staying in the corner with a blanket about her shoulders, and Bobo never crossing an invisible line that neither acknowledged but existed nonetheless they both obeyed. He would put things away, never having to tidy up beyond that. She worked on the space when he wasn’t there, neatening and straightening and slowly, with time, making it her own. He would settle in by the door and read to her, not merely words but expressions and emotions as they explored the story together. 

This went on for a year before she first ever spoke to him. 

He was reading a story, a novel that she had selected though he had started bringing some titles he’d chosen on his own, when he heard her voice directed at him for the first time since the night she “died”.

“You’ve got that all wrong.”

Her voice was husky, rough with lack of use, and derisive of something though Bobo had no idea what. Yet he remained still, not looking up from the book for a long moment, not wanting to spook her when this new progress had been made.

“Pardon me?”

She heaves a sigh and that is when Bobo lifts his gaze from the book. She’s staring at him, hazel eyes intent and narrowed showing a stubbornness Wade had warned Bobo about. 

“You’re wrong on your interpretation of that. I get that women of your era were thankful to be wed to a strapping man who could care for them, but that’s not how things are. She’s pissed and she’s mocking him.”

“As you’ve mocked me with your silence for a year now?”

“And now I mock you with words,” she said, giving a mirthless chuckle. “So if you’re going to continue, in any of this? You’re going to handle it right. Understood?”

In his era, as she put it, she would have been promised to marriage, if not married already. She was all spitfire and vinegar, as dangerous as an Earp always was and with just as much attitude. For a long time they merely stared at one another. After a long moment he closed the book, setting it down on the floor and giving it a shove to send it over to where Willa was. It stopped just short of her feet.

“Show me then, Willa. How it should be.”

Not angry, not demanding in a cruel way. Truly asking her to share with him what it is she thinks about the book. 

Still that hazel gaze stays on him even as she reaches over, picking up the book. Opening it and flipping through the pages until she finds where he left off, she gives him one more look before she started to read.

And Bobo remained quiet, letting her educate him in that husky voice that was much too mature for her age. Then the day after that, and the next one. After a time she would close the book, shoving it back across the floor to him. She’d never come closer to him. He never moved closer to her. They just read to one another day after day. Bobo sometimes bringing books he enjoyed, other times reading new ones from the lists she left him. 

Never moving closer to one another, never changing their cycle of sitting apart and sharing things between them but Bobo had seen the change. Not in sharing, but in her gaze. In the way she kept her head up when he came in, never blinking, never looking away until he started reading. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.


End file.
